To See, to Sell: The Role of the Photographic Image in Portuguese Colonial Exhibitions (1929–1940)

Abstract

This chapter is an attempt to characterize the different functions of the photographic image in the context of several Portuguese exhibitions of the early Portuguese New State (Estado Novo). It analyzes the network of representations elaborated by the organizers of these events, by measuring the effects of a supposedly voluntary confusion between the clichés performed in colonial lands and the images that testify the scenography of the exhibitions, carried out—mostly—in metropolitan space. At once a support for “colonial science”, an illustration of Portuguese civilizing efforts and an object of political propaganda, the photographic object multiplies its functions in the balance of the exhibitions. In this way, it participates in the transformation of the exhibition space into the factual reproduction of a Portuguese Empire, idealized for political and economic purposes. The chapter also approaches the question of the reception of photography by the visitors of the exhibitions, in their cultural and social diversity, emphasizing its double character: presented as an objective illustration of the African or Asian reality, it reinforces the imperial illusion built by the Salazarist authorities, in a great continuity with previous practices and with the support of various institutions (Catholic Church, Army, colonial companies, trade and employer associations and centers of cultural and scientific production). On a methodological point of view, the study of photography as a set of information for the researcher should demonstrate what can be obtained from an analysis of photography as a historical source of full right, seeking, whenever possible, to reconstitute the context of production as of reception of the cliché, besides analyzing its visual content. This work also involves the confrontation of the photographic source with the abundant written corpus left by the exhibitions (guides, catalogs, press articles and administrative correspondence).